Digby Mackworth Dolben
Digby Augustus Stewart Mackworth Dolben (8 February 1848 – 28 June 1867) was an English poet who died young from drowning. He owes his poetic reputation to his cousin, Robert Bridges (Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1913 to 1930), who edited a partial edition of his verse in 1911. Life Dolben was born in Guernsey, and brought up at Finedon Hall in Northamptonshire. His father, William Harcourt Isham Mackworth (1806—1872), a younger son of Sir Digby Mackworth, the 3rd Baronet, took the additional surname Dolben after he married Frances, the heiress of Sir John English Dolben, the 4th Baronet. He was educated at Eton College, studying under the influential Master William Johnson Cory whose principles of pedagogy and collection of verses Ionica inspired his own poetry.The Poems and Letters of Digby Mackworth Dolben 1848-1867, Martin Cohen ed. (1981) At Eton, his distant cousin Bridges was his senior and took him under his wing. Dolben caused considerable scandal at school by his exhibitionist behaviour. He marked his romantic attachment to another pupil a year older than he was, Martin Le Marchant Gosselin, by writing love poetry. He also defied his strict Protestant upbringing by joining a High Church Puseyite group of pupils. He then claimed allegiance to the Order of St Benedict, affecting a monk's habit. He was considering a conversion to Roman Catholicism.The Poems and Letters of Digby Mackworth Dolben 1848-1867, Martin Cohen ed. (1981) p.171, quoting letter from Dolben to John Henry Newman, dated 20 March 1867 In 1865 on his seventeenth birthday, he was introduced by Bridges, by then an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to Gerard Manley Hopkins who was at Balliol. According to the account given by his biographer Norman White, this encounter caused Hopkins a great deal of perturbation. Hopkins's biographer Robert Bernard Martin asserts that Hopkins’s meeting with Dolben, "was, quite simply, the most momentous emotional event of his undergraduate years, probably of his entire life".Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life, p. 80; see also Norman White, Hopkins: A Literary Biography, p. 110) Hopkins was completely taken with Dolben, who was nearly four years his junior, and his private journal for confessions the following year proves how absorbed he was in imperfectly suppressed erotic thoughts of himRobert Bernard Martin, "Digby Augustus Stewart Dolben," DNB) Hopkins kept up a correspondence with Dolben, wrote about him in his diary and composed two poems about the youth, "Where art thou friend" and "The Beginning of the End."The Poems and Letters of Digby Mackworth Dolben 1848-1867, Martin Cohen ed. (1981) Hopkins' High Anglican confessor seems to have forbidden him to have any contact with Dolben except by letter. Dolben's death greatly affected Hopkins, although his feeling for Dolben seems to have cooled by that time.The Poems and Letters of Digby Mackworth Dolben 1848-1867, Martin Cohen ed. (1981) Dolben drowned in the River Welland when bathing with the ten-year-old son of his tutor, Rev. C.E. Prichard, Rector of South Luffenham. He was aged 19 and preparing to go up to Oxford. Bridges guaranteed Dolben's reputation with Three Friends: Memoirs of Digby Mackworth Dolben, Richard Watson Dixon, Henry Bradley (1932), as well as the careful editing of his poetry in the 1913 volume Poems. Subsequently The Poems and Letters of Digby Mackworth Dolben 1848-1867 (1981), edited by Martin Cohen, has given a less selective picture. Recognition Two of his poems were included in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917).Alphabetic List of Authors, Oxford Book of Mystical English Verse] (Oxford: Clarendon, 1917), Bartleby.com, Web, July 19, 2012. Publications * The Poems of Digby Mackworth Dolben (edited by Robert Bridges). London & New York: Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1915. * The Poems and Letters of Digby Mackworth Dolben 1848-1867 (edited by Martin Cohen), 1981. See also * List of British poets References * White, Norman. Hopkins: A Literary Biography. Oxford University Press, 1992. Notes External links ;Poems * "Flowers for the Altar" * "Strange, All-Absorbing Love" * Selected Poetry of Digby (Mackworth) Dolben (1848-1867) ("A Song of the Bar," "Beyond") at Representative Poetry Online. * Digby Mackworth Dolben at PoemHunter (52 poems). ;About * The Strangely Troubled Life of Digby Mackworth Dolben at Public Domain Review. Category:English poets Category:1848 births Category:1867 deaths Category:People from Guernsey Category:People from Wellingborough (district) Category:Old Etonians Category:Deaths by drowning Category:LGBT writers from the United Kingdom Category:Accidental deaths in England Category:19th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets